101 CPW's mismatched windows might irk a purist, but Mr. Adams' will surely enjoy his gleaming, grandfathered-in glass.

Completed in 1930, 101 Central Park West is about as famous as the Gershwins' most famous productions. And for the past three decades, it's also been home to Marc Gershwin, the son of George and Ira's brother Arthur. The songwriters' less-well-known brother was, according to his son, a minor composer who "had the misfortune to be the brother of a dead genius."

When Mr. Gershwin took over trusteeship of the famous Gershwin music trove—estimated to bring in $5 to $10 million a year—he told The Telegraph that "it was not being well minded: Ira had been very passive and trusted everyone." Mr. Gershwin has been warier, turning down an all-white Finnish version as well as a more insidious apartheid-era South African production of Porgy and Bess. (That said, they haven't been as faithful to the original productions as Stephen Sondheim would have liked—he penned a sneering and sarcastic letter to The New York Times decrying a recent adaptation of George Gershwin's operatic magnum opus.)

When Mr. Gershwin and his wife, Andrea, tried to sell their 15th-floor co-op at 101 CPW, they got their own taste of rejection—their first buyer, who went into contract for the unit in late 2012, was turned down by the board, broker Lorraine Ding of Akam Sales and Brokerage told The Observer (she shared the listing with her colleague Michele Gershwin, a relative of the sellers).

But they quickly found another buyer—Eiko Adams, who makes his home, according to city records, on St. Croix—and the deal was sealed. It wasn't the $5.75 million that Mr. and Ms. Gershwin wanted, but after thirty years of ownership, we're guessing that they still netted a tidy profit with the $5.37 million sale.

Living at one of the most prestigious addresses on Central Park West, Mr. Adams might be able to sneak a peak at Georgina Bloomberg in the elevator (attended, natch, so he'll have to be stealthy with those iPhone shots), who paid more than $4 million for a unit in the building after reportedly scoping out more than 150 apartments throughout the five boroughs. (Just kidding—we'd be surprised if she even looked in Brooklyn.) The Schwartz and Gross-designed building was also once home to Robert A.M. Stern who may have even cribbed some pre-war details for that other building he designed on Central Park West.

The apartment itself is a classic seven, with "side park views," according to the broker (the real estate equivalent of sideboob, we presume) and oversized windows, snuck in before the Landmarks Preservation Commission put an end to the building's proliferating window styles when they expanded the Central Park West Historic District in 1990.

We're more than a little jealous of the views.

The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn't what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.

But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor ("Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town," the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America's densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can't make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis.

The interior views aren't half bad, either. The previous owner, Broadway legend Tommy Tune, combined a penthouse unit with the apartment downstairs. He then sold it for $6 million to its current owners and would-be sellers, Julia Kim and Stephen Rushmore, decamping to a magical tower apartment on the Far East Side.

The couple gave the apartment about as much attention as you could possibly ask for, with Ms. Kim quitting her banking job to spend all her time renovating the unit (terrace by Luciano Giubbilei, furniture by David Suterland, chandelier inspired by Dale Chihuly), according to a New York Times write-up back in 2007.

And the renovation appears to have paid off. The unit was featured in a coffee table book, which then caught the eye of Nieman Marcus, who sent a small army of people to do their fall shoot at the apartment a few weeks ago, according to broker Kianna Choi with Bond New York. We assume that Ms. Kim and Mr. Rushmore—who appear to be quite the clotheshounds from the look of their massive, customized closet—were thrilled.

Good luck.

Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned "trophy" vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar  dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.

At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57's penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late '80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early '90s (and hasn't renovated since)?

When the unit was taken off the market it seemed like Mr. Klar had finally come to his senses, but never fear, property schadenfreude fiends: Mr. Klar's unit is back! The price is the same—still a risible nine digits, albeit the lowest nine-digit number—but the brokers, Raphael De Niro and Victoria Logvinsky, are gone (and not returning our phone calls).

In their place is... Klar Realty! The penthouse at the mixed-use tower at 150 West 56th Street is now for sale by owner, in what we assume must be the most expensive for-sale-by-owner listing in world history.

"We did a great job with Douglas Elliman," Mr. Klar told The Observer when reached at his office this afternoon. "We were getting calls from other brokers, and I didn't want to deal with it that way."

Asked if he thought he could reach his ask, Mr. Klar responded, "When we finally sell it, we'll know the value." And would he take $50 million for it?

"Absolutely not."

"It could be for sale by the owner's maid," one top New York City broker told The Observer, "that's not the issue. The price and the product are the issue."

With a dated interior—disclaimed by its designer, Juan Pablo Molyneux, who told The Times, "I never thought that this horror would be published, and then everybody would blame me for having done it" (though at least the interior can be fixed, unlike the exterior)—and low ceilings, we'll be impressed if it sells for half its ask.

At $12,500 per square foot, half price—more than $6,000 a foot—would still be incredibly ambitious.

"Owners in love do all kinds of things," one broker said. "Not always the wisest."

Built in 1839, the 22.5-foot-wide Greenwich Village townhouse has only been owned by only three families over its 175-year life. Its most famous owner, John Philip Sousa, invented the sousaphone and penned marching ballads, including Marine standard “Semper Fidelis” and “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” and was also a committed technophobe. “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country,” he testified to Congress in 1906, presaging the rise of Skrillex.

The most recent owners are the Raineros; Gildo Rainero purchased the property in the 1960s. Though he carved it into nine apartments, the house has been stitched back together over time and then some. The developer, Gildo's grandson William Rainero, has added a story to the house, and hired Clodagh Design to redo the interiors, with stone, exposed brick, steel and plenty of glass. While the front face of the house is for the most part still the 19th century Georgian style you'd expect from the Village, the back is nearly all glass.

The property is now listed with Town for $28.9 million, a number that was gradually lowered from last year's $31.5 million ask. (While the property is Town's most expensive listing in Manhattan, it won't be the most expensive in Greenwich Village: that honor belongs to 11 West 10th Street, appraisal guru Jonathan Miller tells us, which sold for $34.5 million in 2007, at the height of the last bubble.)

In terms of amenities, the house is no slouch. While most townhouses have only a single kitchen, this one has four—the normal one plus a catering kitchen and two outdoor cooking spaces—including one designed by New York-by-way-of-Florence restaurateur Silvano Marchetto. There's also a 700-bottle wine cellar and an espresso maker built into the wall (why not?). Plus, it includes all the normal things you'd expect from an eight-digit townhouse—a lounge, a screening room, a full-floor master suite, a zen garden and a roof deck—plus some things you wouldn't, like views of both One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building. Not to mention the coal chute that's been repurposed into a stone-faced waterfall.

1049 "Fifth" Avenue.

John E. Zuccotti may have a park of his own downtown, made famous by the Occupy Wall Street protests that centered around the privately-owned public space, but when he and his wife Susan decided to pick up an apartment in Manhattan, they chose a more classical park to look out onto: Central Park.

The real estate titan (you don't get a park in Lower Manhattan named after you for nothing—he's the chairman of Brookfield Properties American division and was a partner at Olympia & York, the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York and has served on the Planning Commission; for a brief period in the the '70s, he was even an establishment favorite for mayor) picked up a two-bedroom on the sixth floor for nearly $2.6 million—a number that, on Fifth Avenue, suggests a striking degree of modesty.

Then again, the Zuccottis' new building at 1049 Fifth Avenue is not actually be on Central Park or Fifth Avenue—in fact, it sits 100 feet away from the avenue, separated by the William Starr Miller House, now home to the Neue Galerie New York and its collections of Gustav Klimts.

In any case, the Zuccottis' new condo (the building was converted in 1991, and subsequently achieved some of the highest prices for any New York City condominium) has only eastern and southern exposures, though a western one wouldn't do them much good since it's only at the eighth floor that residents at 1049 Fifth Avenue actually get the views that their address promises.

The unit did sell for nearly $1,700 per square foot, a somewhat surprising price given its lack of park views. Carol Staab, the listing broker with Douglas Elliman, attributed the high price to the dearth of pre-war condominium units on Fifth Avenue. The buyers, she said, are planning on renting it out for four years—something they likely couldn't have done in a co-op building with a strict board—before moving in themselves. (We couldn't find any other real estate that Mr. and Ms. Zuccotti own in the city, at least under their own name, though they did sell their longtime Carroll Gardens home to their daughters a few years ago for the very low price of $0.00.)

The seller, Amine Soussane, is no stranger to Upper East Side property sales. In fact, aside from the a dry spell between 2006 and 2011, he's been known to do multiple sales a year, with his largest being the 2005 sale of a high-floor Fifth Avenue unit (actually on Fifth Avenue this time) for $8.35 million. His latest sale fell more than $100,000 short of its ask, Mr. Soussane at least sold it for more than $2.3 million, which is what he paid back in 2006.

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but can a $17.5 million townhouse gather a buyer?

When Jann and Jane Wenner split in 1995, the coupled stayed married,  putting off the legal wrangling that would inevitably arise when they split their publishing empire. Mr. Wenner borrowed $7,500 from his own family and from the family of his wife to found Rolling Stone, and once it grew into an empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars and includes Men's Journal and Us Weekly, it would be understandable if the vagaries of divorce just didn't seem worth it.

Until, that is, 2011. Mr. Wenner had been living with his partner, Matt Nye, a former Calvin Klein model 19 years his junior with whom he's raising three kids, and Ms. Wenner finally wanted out. (There was speculation that the divorce was finalized because Mr. Wenner and Mr. Nye wanted to formally marry each other, but despite the legalization of gay marriage in New York, that never came to pass.) There was a little acrimony in the divorce, including a lawsuit filed by Ms. Wenner's Amagansett groundskeeper, but things seem to have gone as smoothly as a divorce can be expected to go and Jane Wenner got to keep the couple's Upper West Side townhouse, at 37 West 70th Street.

Now, after three years of holding onto the property, Ms. Wenner wants to cash out. Though she acquired Mr. Wenner's stake in the home in 2010 for a bit more than $4 million, now she wants much, much more: $17.95 million. At nearly $2,500 per square foot for the 7,200-square foot home, the asking price is nearly double the Upper West Side townhouse average.

Once owned by Perry Ellis, the 20-foot-wide, five-story townhouse dates back to 1891, when it was designed by architect Gilbert A. Schellenger, who built townhouses from Harlem to Crown Heights. It was most recently renovated by American designer Ward Bennett—a distinction that no new homes will be able to claim, given that he passed away in 2003.

"The bathrooms are outfitted with the Art Deco treasures of the London Savoy Hotel," reads the listing—Wolf Jakubowski of Brown Harris Stevens has the exclusive. The home has five bedrooms, but where it really shines are the fireplaces: it lays claim to a whopping ten, nine of which are wood (or back issues of the glossy magazine) burning.

She's a survivor.

Robert A.M. Stern's 15 Central Park West may be the hottest building in New York, but the good fortune hasn't crept up the western edge of the park, which still plays second fiddle to the Fifth and Park when it comes to closing prices. There are some standouts, though, and the townhouse at 247 Central Park West is most definitely among them. Whether it stands out tall enough to get its $37 million ask is another question entirely.

Built in 1887, it's the first townhouse you encounter on Central Park West—a rare holdout to withstand two waves of rapacious early 20th century redevelopment. The first, around the turn of the century and the construction of the city's first subway on Broadway, saw developers raze townhouses and tenements all around No. 247 and its two neighbors on the block to erect apartment houses of a dozen or so floors. During the second boom, around the time the IND Eighth Avenue Line was being built underneath Central Park West and right before the Great Depression, the pressure mounted and builders strove for even loftier heights, with buildings as tall as the 30-story El Dorado eating away at what remained of the low-slung real estate.

But through a combination of luck and placement higher up along the avenue (it sits between West 84th and 85th Strets), 247 CPW made it to the late 20th century, meeting the warm embrace of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which ensured that no would-be Dakotas or San Remos will ever again threaten this six-story townhouse.

Would you care for a lap pool with your archway?

And for its fortitude, 247 Central Park West has earned another accolade: it was the most expensive townhouse on the Upper West Side when it sold back in 2009. Abigail Disney, filmmaker, philanthropist—and yes, Disney heiress—sold the house to Coach exec Keith Monda for $15.5 million in 2006, who went on to set the West Side townhouse record (or maybe the citywide record if you don't include extra-wide Upper East Side mansions) three years later with his $22.4 million sale to a mysterious LLC named Top Estate (NY) Corp.

After trying to rent it out for a staggering $110,000 per month back in early 2012, the owners—chatter among the brokers is that they're Russian—wants to set the record again.

With a pool in the basement, an in-home theater and a massive skylight, it's no doubt an impressive house, but is it worth $37 million? We've seen a lot of ambitious asks since the $88 million condo at 15 Central Park West, but no new records. It's likely that Sotheby's Vannessa Kaufman can set a new Upper West Side record, given the limited pool of comparable houses (basically limited to 247's next-door neighbors) and its track record in a less ebullient time, but a more than 60 percent return over three years may be a check that this townhouse can't cash.

Modest façade yields modest returns.

John Thaler is best known for his tech-heavy hedge fund picks, but this morning he cashed out on a more old world investment: real estate. The JAT Capital manager just sold his condo combo at 450 East 83rd Street for $5.2 million, according to city records.

Mr. Thaler bought the two 17th-floor apartments at the Cielo in 2006 and 2009, for a combined total of almost $4.4 million. After an average of five years of ownership, his profit—exclusive of any taxes, fees or renovation costs—comes out to about $800,000, or an average return on his initial investment of about 3.4 percent per year.

While it beats inflation, this return pales in comparison to the gains—and losses—that Mr. Thaler has taken on his high-flying hedge fund. Down just 6 percent in 2008, a year that the major indices were pummeled with massive losses, Mr. Thaler made gains over the next three years—20 percent in 2009, 10 percent in 2010 and 17 percent in 2011.

But once the recession eased, Mr. Thaler's magic seemed to wear off. Once up 30 percent, Mr. Thaler's JAT Capital took a sharp nose dive in mid-2012, falling 20 percent at one point, torpedoed by a bad bet on Tempur-Pedic and misguided pessimism on Weight Watchers, Sears and the Chinese search engine Alibaba.com. While 3.4 percent may have been a paltry return compared to the torrential pace at which he accumulated value during the recession, this modest Upper East Side return was likely a welcome respite from the losses he's taken more recently.

The 3,500-square foot spread spans two corner units at this anodyne tower, built in 2006. At one point Mr. Thaler wanted significantly more for the unit: according to the New York Post, he was trying for $6.4 million at the beginning of 2012. His Brown Harris Stevens brokers, Drew Glick and Richard Ferrari, seem to have brought Mr. Thaler's ambitions back down to earth, though, relisting the unit for a more reasonable $5.45 million at the end of last year.

Gerald Walker (we're guessing not the 25-year-old Chicago-born rapper) and his wife, Laura, are the buyers. As for Mr. Thaler, we don't see any new purchases in city records. He may be renting, or he may have retreated back to his 11,000-square foot, seven-bedroom home in hedge fund heaven: Greenwich, Connecticut.

"To illustrate the relationship between fashion and art," they claim.

Last we checked in with Marina Abramović, the Montenegrin grand dame of performance art had just picked up a $2.65 million two-bedroom apartment in Philip Johnson's Urban Glass House.

And now, the other shoe drops: Ms. Abramović has sold her Hudson Square townhouse to Italian designer and Givenchy creative director Riccardo Tisci.

Ms. Abramović and Mr. Tisci are no strangers—Givenchy hosted the closing of Ms. Abramović's "The Artist is Present" show at the Museum of Modern Art and Mr. Tisci dressed Ms. Abramović for the Oscars

And now, Ms. Abramović is returning the favor: she sold her 4,600-square foot townhouse at 54 King Street to Mr. Tisci for a bit over $3 million, according to city records.

At $666 per square foot for the unlisted sale, divided between two units, able to be fully reclaimed by Mr. Tisci, the price is "way below market," according to one broker who does a lot of downtown townhouse sales. Especially when you compare it to the last time it sold, back in 2011, when the price was over $5.3 million. (Oddly, the sale was to an LLC that does not appear to be affiliated with Ms. Abramović, but hers is the only name on the most recent deed. There's also an added wrinkle: the most recent sale was marked as a co-op, despite the fact that the property is a townhouse, so it's possible that only a portion of the building sold.)

Usually sales this far below market take place between family members. And while Ms. Abramović and Mr. Tisci may not be blood relatives, they have shared milk: when Mr. Tisci guest edited an edition of Visionaire, he included a photo of Ms. Abramović breastfeeding him. "The result," wrote the scribes at Blouin Artinfo, "is a profound image, with a Madonna-esque (the Virgin Mary, not the queen of pop) Abramović and a serene Tisci, content from his 'nourishment.' "

For $23 million, you'll no longer have to gaze longingly at the limestone loggia perched atop 10 Gracie Square.

Not often do penthouses at Manhattan’s “Good Buildings” (as per Tom Wolfe, according to whom there are only 42) come on the market, but today is one of those rare days: the south penthouse at 10 Gracie Square was just listed for $23 million.

The white-glove building sits in the rarefied hinterlands of the far East Side, overlooking Carl Schurz Park, and once had a yacht mooring onto the East River, sadly disfigured by the FDR (which is decked over beneath the ritziest buildings—a coincidence, we’re sure). Moreover, the penthouse occupant gets an up-close view of the building’s rooftop fixture, which is rumored to be, along with that on top of 1040 Fifth Avenue, the inspiration for 15 Central Park West’s crown.

The penthouse's current owner is financier Yves de Balmann, who is represented by Brown Harris Stevens broker John Burger.

The ten-room duplex co-op sits right next to Gloria Vanderbilt's old digs (her second choice, after she was rebuffed by the board at River House next door—she says because she was dating a black man, the board says because she would draw unwanted attention), where she raised Anderson Cooper in between acid trips ("After a while," wrote The Telegraph, "the therapist removed her blindfold. To her surprise, everything in the penthouse room at 10 Gracie Square looked entirely normal").

But it was also the site of a more tragic event, when her oldest son, Carter, committed suicide by jumping from the terrace, with Ms. Vanderbilt recalling twenty years later, "He let go, and there was a moment when I thought I was going to jump over after him."

Other bold-faced names to reside at 10 Gracie Square include Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, wife to the Kuomintang leader who was pushed out of mainland China by Communist forces and ended his life as a Taiwanese dictator, as well as Eric Rudin of the eponymous dynastic development firm, who picked up a $12 million triplex in the building in 2011.